FWIW - I've attempted to debayer a tiny piece of image, by hand (using a 90x1 pixel selection again and again, to select alternate rows to cut them to a new layer - then again on columns, to split it into 4 layers. Then, I figured out which were the blue ones ( the darkest ) and from that established the red and the green. I then duplicated those layers to fill out the 2x2 pattern, and then copied into channels on a new image.

ESA often get a hard time here for what they do - or don't do - but this is a BIG step in the right direction, and shows that ESA really are trying to do more with the wealth of data and material they have. As Doug said, congratulations to everyone involved, and here's hoping the site attracts a lot of attention, not just from dyed-in-the-wool spaceflight enthusiasts like ourselves, but from the public too. Will definitely be worth keeping an eye on, looking out for great images. I can hear my hard drive groaning already...

I always though that the Lunar Prospector team was absolutely CRAZY by not taking any type of camera to the Moon.

They did manage to bring an Alpha Spectrometer, Electron Reflectometer, Magnetometer, Neutron Spectrometer, and a Doppler Gravity thing-a-ma-jig.

Lunar Prospector was in a low polar orbit! and not a single image. Then they decided to crash it into the Moon's south pole! Any snapshot from a couple hundred meters would have been iconic.

And now, if you are not a Lunar scientist or a UMSF'er, the impact of Lunar Prosepector (pun intended) is ZERO

Note to spacecraft all designers: this non-science type of camera (MEX-VMC) is worth putting on all future space craft.This is outreach at its best. This is how to capture the imagination of that next person.

This camera represents how we all pack for any trip ...DONT FOR GET THE CAMERA....and unmanned space craft take the most amazing trips!

Bravo to ESA and the MEXMARS Webcam! (...tons of images in the VMC archive...!)

I'm gonna give it a go at writing an app for automatically converting the raw files into RGB. Doug, have you figured out what the exact Bayer matrix looks like, starting from top left - I'd rather not try reinventing the wheel?

I've got a basic app going, it performs a rudimentary interpolation (if someone knows of a good de-Bayer algorithm, I'm open for suggestions) of the RGB data. When I clean it up a bit and sort out a command line interface I'll release it. Any requests in the meantime?

In the meantime, two gif animations:

A crescent (2.3 MB) and a partially overexposed north->south flyover (3 MB). Looks like the camera could benefit from a flatfield frame, if one were to be made. For some reason the RAW frames appear to be truncated in the ZIP archives, the last frame the most.

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